The Fog That Follows
It began with a whisper.
Mara lived alone at the edge of Harlow Woods, a reclusive writer who prized silence like gold. But in the past week, silence had changed. At first, it was subtle—her clock ticking a little louder, her own breathing echoing in the stillness.
Then came the fog.
It rolled in thick every night at 11:47 PM. Not 11:46, not 11:48. Always precise. Too precise.
At first, she thought it was a quirk of the weather. But one night, she noticed shapes in it—figures not quite human, not quite shadow. They didn’t move. They just watched from the mist.
That same night, she received a letter.
Not an email. Not a message. A physical letter, on bone-white paper, slid under her door. No stamp. No address.
“We remember you, Mara. Do you remember us?”
Mara had grown up in Harlow, left for the city, and returned to escape a past she’d long buried. But the fog remembered.
She locked her doors. She stopped writing. She started drinking. The fog came anyway.
The whispers grew louder, sometimes taking voices she recognized—her childhood friend who vanished at thirteen, her father who died in that same forest. They called her name with familiarity that chilled her blood.
Then came the tapping.
Every night, 12:03 AM. Tap. Tap. Tap. On her window. On her mirror. On her walls. It never stopped. Not until she acknowledged it.
One night, she did.
She looked into the mirror, and the reflection was not her own. It wore her face but had no eyes. Just holes. And when it spoke, it smiled.
“You left us in the dark. We just want to come home.”
Mara screamed and smashed the mirror.
The next morning, the fog was gone.
So was Mara.
But now, every night at exactly 11:47 PM, the fog rolls in again—only now, it begins on the inside of the house she once called home.
And someone else always disappears.
0 comments:
Post a Comment